It is amazing. This contact. Strange and exhilarating and delicious. So much better than my one other kiss in eighth grade. Michael’s warm hands are on my waist now—
“Catherine, I got something for you!” Lorraine yells from somewhere above.
Snapping my head back from Michael’s, I quickly turn around and hike up a step to put some distance between us.
“Catherine, I want you to take some icebox cake home,” Lorraine says as she appears in the doorway. “You didn’t have dessert.”
“Oh, thanks,” I say. I climb the stairs. My hand shakes a little as I reach for the paper plate covered in plastic wrap.
Nonny emerges from the kitchen as Michael joins me in the hallway. “You ever have it, Michael’s friend? Icebox cake?” she asks.
“Uh, no,” I say.
“It’s just graham crackers between layers of pudding and whipped cream,” Lorraine says. “It’s got to go in the fridge, okay?”
Nonny adds, “It’s Michael’s favorite!”
Lorraine puts her arms out as I walk toward the door. I guess I have to hug her. She gives me an Aunt D hug, squeezing me hard and fast, and then lets go.
“Thanks for coming, Catherine. Come over again, okay? And tell your mom I’m sorry I didn’t drive you home.”
“It’s no problem. Really. She was finished at work, anyway,” I say. “Thank you so much for dinner.” I look back at Nonny. “The food was great.”
Michael, flushed and red-necked, hasn’t moved from the basement doorway. Nonny grabs his arm and pushes him toward me.
“What you standing there for? Go say good-bye to your friend. Walk her to the car!”
Michael shrugs off Nonny and follows me out the front door. We walk in silence to the Accord at the curb. Mom’s at the wheel on her phone but clicks it off as Michael and I approach.
Opening the passenger-side window, Mom yells to Michael, “Hi, Michael. Please thank your mom again for me.”
“Not a problem,” Michael says quickly.
I turn to Michael. “Well…uh…,” I say.
Mom’s face looms larger in my peripheral vision as she leans farther across the passenger seat to get a better look at us. Jesus.
But then Michael smiles and I can read the wonder and disbelief in his healer eyes. “Good night, Cath.”
It’s 4:07 on Monday afternoon and I’m not at St. Anne’s. It’s my monthly med-management appointment with Dr. McCallum and should take fifteen minutes, twenty tops. I’ve got the drill down pat: greeting—I am fine, thank you, no side effects—and a hop onto the scale. A few quick questions and then it’s sayonara. The plan is for Mom to drop me off at the IOP after so I can make the last half of the session.
Today I give Dr. McCallum a generous seven on my numerical mood scale, up a whopping point from last month. This good news is followed by more questions and more answers: Yes, St. Anne’s is fine. Yes, I am sleeping. Not too much and not too little. Yes, I am eating. Yes, I am attending class. Yes, I am completing my homework. No, I am not feeling hopeless. No, my thoughts are not racing. No, I am not thinking of killing myself. No sir, everything’s just swell. I scoot to the end of the chair, ready to rise to my feet. But Dr. McCallum sits back and stretches his long legs, settling into the armchair opposite me. Wait a sec, we’re not supposed to have a therapy session now.
“I’ve had a cancellation, Catherine, so I figured we’d use the time to chat a little,” he says, patting the top of his balding head as if checking to see if anything has grown. “Your mother emailed me. She said things seem to be going pretty well.”
Christ Almighty, Mom! She’d Instagram a particularly hearty poop of mine if she could. This is Catherine’s BM last night. Normal for someone on Lamictal?
Dr. McCallum rests his Catherine Pulaski chart on his knees. “How would you rate things?”
“Um…fine,” I answer, slightly bewildered by the lack of dismissal. “Like I said before.”
“What’s fine about them?” he asks.
Well, if we’re being honest, Dr. McCallum, not a whole hell of a lot. I’m bipolar if you haven’t forgotten, and I’ll be that way for the rest of my sorry life. But short-term-wise, things have been surprisingly tolerable. If I dare to be completely honest with myself, the number on my numerical mood scale is probably a six. But I don’t like to dwell on that, because it’s hardwired not to last. And I know what’s waiting for me.
“Um…I met this kid,” I say. “He’s pretty nice. We’re doing a history project together.”
Of course, Dr. McCallum wants details, like Michael’s name and the project and what we’ve done together. I tell him how we spent Saturday at the library and that I had dinner at Michael’s house.
Dr. McCallum nods. “And how did you feel while you were there?”
“Fine. We had fun,” I say, omitting the kiss, that kiss, the one I can’t stop thinking about. How great it was to touch someone and be touched. I even recorded it on my D-Day List as entry number two: First Kiss, Michael. On Sunday night at 9:48 p.m. he texted. Something short. But so damn sweet it sent a swell of good feelings swirling through me. “I’m glad we finally met this year! ”
It’s quiet for at least a minute. Dr. McCallum does this. Allows these gaps of silence so that I’ll keep talking. But I don’t. I just sit and wait. He breaks first, asking me how I feel about hanging out with Michael. If I think we’ll hang out again. And how I feel about that. Et cetera, et cetera. I give my usual generic responses and then I lean forward, hoping my body language indicates that our appointment is over.
But he ignores it and springs this on me, “How are you feeling about your grandmother?” He is forever asking me this, at every other session, as if she died yesterday instead of two years and three months ago.
I shift in the chair. I refuse to cover this territory with him.
But he pushes. “You were alone with her, right? When she died?”
Dear God, I pray, make him stop. It’s times like these that I long for Dr. A’s laissez-faire attitude.
“Catherine?” Dr. McCallum persists. “I know this is hard to talk about.”
Why don’t you try chatting about your loved one stroking out right in front of you? How at first you think it’s a joke. That she’s trying to be funny with that weird face and…and…those sounds. But then you see the animal terror in her eyes. Spot the ropy string of drool dangling from the corner of her mouth. And you know it’s no joke. And there’s nothing you can do as she pitches forward like a redwood and hits the bedroom carpet face-first and goes still. And it’s all happening so fast that calling 911 hasn’t even crossed your mind.
I sit there, mute. I cannot unleash this. Not today. Not ever. How do I explain the fear? The grief in witnessing her dignity demolished. That rude string of saliva. She would’ve especially despised that. Because Grandma was always impeccable—clothes, hair, jewelry. She never emerged from the bedroom without her makeup on. Her lipstick fresh at 6:30 a.m. Oh God, that part hurt the worst. The stroke stealing her dignity.
“We talked about this before,” Dr. McCallum says. “You know your mother would like to clean out your grandmother’s room.” Adrenaline surges through me. Holy fuck! Did she start already? Did she find my shoe box? I sit straight up in the chair, my heart racing triple-time. I can’t breathe awaiting his next question.
Dr. McCallum watches me closely as he says, “She said she doesn’t want to upset you. She said when she tried last year you were very unhappy about it. How do you feel about that? Cleaning out some of your grandmother’s belongings?”
I exhale. Okay, I know where he’s headed with this—emptying out Grandma’s room and converting it into a “cozy study,” as Mom had proposed. But it still feels bad. Wrong. Disrespectful. I don’t want Mom touching one lace doily in there.
Dr. McCallum leans forward, done talking. It’s my turn to say something about erasing all traces of my grandmother’s monumental existence from the house.
“I�
�m not ready,” I say, the truth a foreign, bulky thing on my lips.
He nods. “Your mom is fine with that. She told me it wouldn’t happen until you say so. You understand that, right, Catherine? Nothing happens with your grandmother’s room until you say so. How does that feel to you?”
I nod as a sliver of relief flows through me and then make quite the show of looking at the small clock on the table. I really need to get the fuck out of here.
Dr. McCallum waits a beat before beginning. “Catherine, mourning can be a long, long process. Especially when the circumstances are particularly traumatic, like what happened to you. I know you’re not ready to talk to me about it, but I am here for you when the time comes. And the time should come at some point.”
I nod again, but I know I’ll never be able to talk about it.
After the session, I have no interest in going to St. Anne’s. On the ride home, Mom asks me to run into Walmart to buy napkins while she gets gas. I’m feeling shaky, unmoored. Dr. McCallum lifts up the boulders in my head and shines a flashlight on stuff I do not want to see. I don’t like thinking about Grandma. How her brain weakened and betrayed her. It reminds me too much of my own defect. It reminds me that my future is damned. Regardless of how fine and dandy things can be, I’m still in Zero’s crosshairs. He’s coming for me. My permanent mental sucker punch. With all the resulting loss of dignity. So once inside Walmart, I stride straight to the pharmacy department and select a one-hundred-tablet bottle of Tylenol with the twenty dollars Aunt Darlene slipped me after our Mexican dinner. I pocket the bottle inside my sweater before exiting the store with the napkins.
Tonight, my shoe box gets a little more crowded.
It’s Tuesday at St. Anne’s. Week Two. The intensive outpatient program runs for three hours, three o’clock to six o’clock, with a ten-minute snack break, usually around 4:15. As soon as group guru Sandy announces break time and everyone stands and stretches, Kristal catches my eye and does a subtle head tilt toward the door, her long silver earrings swinging.
Outside Room Three, Kristal gently takes my elbow and steers me toward the girls’ bathroom. The others remain clustered around the Costco-sized jar of animal crackers and the bottled waters on the table. Inside the bathroom, Kristal plants her back against the door, blocking entry from the Immaculate Conception girls. “You’ve got to give me a heads-up when you’re not coming, Cat. It is unbearable when you’re not here.” Then, whipping out her iPhone, she asks, “What’s your number?”
What’s your number? What’s your number? What’s. Your. Number. A surge of happy floods me. It is the second time in two weeks I’ve been asked for my number.
As Kristal pecks in my number, she asks, “Why’d you miss yesterday?”
“Medication check,” I say, astonished at how easy it is to be truthful with this girl I barely know. Maybe it’s the free-to-be-fucked-up vibe at St. Anne’s. Maybe it’s the new nickname—Cat—that Kristal has christened me with, making me feel like somebody else. Or that she willingly makes physical contact with me—digging her arm into my side during discussions, taking my elbow, grabbing my hand to make a point. Or maybe it’s that a girl like her, rich and polished and smart, seems to want to hang out, at least here at St. Anne’s, with Cat Pulaski.
Kristal rolls her eyes. “Don’t you hate all this? Shrink, IOPs, therapy…it’s endless.”
“God, yes,” I say, loving how phenomenal it is to confide in somebody who understands completely. Especially on the heels of yesterday’s hell session with Dr. McCallum.
Somebody raps hard on the bathroom door, and both Kristal and I jump. A girl’s voice urgently shout-whispers, “I need to come in!”
“It’s Amy,” Kristal whispers, bracing herself against the door. “Just a minute!” Kristal calls out sweetly before telling me, “Always text if you’re not coming. ’Cause if you’re not coming, neither am I. The only person I want to do a freaking collage with here is you.”
We roll our eyes about the arts-and-crafts project Sandy has planned for us today. We’re going to cut out pictures from magazines to make special “self-soothing” collages. We have to select images of things that soothe our five senses when we’re stressed. Sandy had offered up examples, such as a cozy blanket, hot chocolate, scented candles, relaxing music. Oh goody. All I need is for Mommy to hang it on the fridge.
Amy raps again. “C’mon already. I don’t feel good,” she says in a low voice.
Kristal flings open the door and Amy barrels in. In the fluorescent light, the blue shadows under her eyes make the rest of her face a pale, greenish hue. She clutches her lower belly.
“Uh…would you mind giving me some privacy?” Amy asks, not quite making eye contact with us. She looks longingly at an open stall. “I’m sorry. It must be something I ate.”
These three sentences are the most Amy has ever spoken to me. And the sole thing she’s ever said to Kristal was how disruptive Kristal’s late arrival was that one time. Since then, she only talks with Sandy, the boys, or her Immaculate Conception sidekick, Alexis.
“Oh jeez, sure!” Kristal says, moving toward the door. “Can we get you anything? Water?”
Amy shakes her head and gives a forced smile. “Don’t tell Alexis. Or anyone. It’s embarrassing.” She moves quickly into the stall, slamming the door behind her.
As I follow Kristal out, there’s an incredibly long, loud wet-sounding eruption from Amy’s stall.
I start to smirk, but then Kristal says, “That’s why I never use a public bathroom. No dignity.” Instantly, I’m brought back to yesterday’s session with Dr. McCallum and Grandma, and I get an image of me rambling in the chair at Rodrick’s salon about wanting to look like Audrey Hepburn for my fantasy trip to Italy. The happy buzz from Kristal wanting my number ebbs until Kristal whispers, “I actually shit in my pants in my mother’s car. She was furious. We were at the mall and I had to go but wouldn’t use the bathroom there. On the drive home, I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
We both begin to crack up outside Room Three.
“The car reeked for weeks. Oh my God, Cat,” Kristal says softly, laughing and holding her stomach. “It was horrible.”
“When?” I ask, thinking it had to be a kindergarten kind of event.
Kristal grips my wrist, tears of laughter filling her eyes. “Don’t tell a soul! Summer before sophomore year!”
We almost fall over laughing.
“It gets worse,” Kristal says between laughs. “My mother made me take off my shorts and underwear in the garage. I…I still have this image of her running to the garbage can with this…this laden pair of Victoria’s Secret black lace undies.”
The two of us slump to the hallway floor. I’m laughing so hard, my stomach muscles cramp in the best kind of pain. Both Sandy and Vanessa come out to check on us.
For the rest of the afternoon, Kristal and I cannot control ourselves, pasting ads for toe fungus medicine and Depends next to the puppies and beach sunset pictures on our “self-soothing” collages. Cleaning up the mess on our table, Kristal leans close and whispers, “I have never told anyone that story, Cat. Not anyone. You’re the only one.”
Her words make me forget that last night I added a new bottle of Tylenol to my shoe box. They make me forget that I am terminal.
This hour and a half has to be one of the best afternoons of my life.
As soon as I get home from St. Anne’s, my phone choos. It’s Kristal. “Still!!!! laughing!!!! ”
“Me too!!!!” I type back immediately.
Mom turns away from the kitchen sink, where she’s scrubbing out a tall Tupperware container that held the chili she made on Sunday. She mouths, “Michael?” with her eyebrows raised questioningly.
I shake my head, ignoring the slow burn that ignites with every micromanagement of my life. I move to the living room.
“Are you missing any more this week?” Kristal writes.
“No. You?” I answer.
“Here all
week but missing next Friday to check out colleges. Would rather go to IOP! Hahahahahahaha!!”
Mom scurries into the living room and stands over me, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. She stage-whispers loudly, “Who are you texting?”
“You do realize that I’m texting, right? Nobody can hear you when you text,” I say.
Mom asks in her regular voice, “Who’re you texting?”
“Kristal,” I answer, and look back down at my phone. Mom returns to the kitchen and bursts into song. Jesus help me. I type Kristal: “You a senior?”
“Yes. Only seven months of chapman hell left. Counting the minutes. Haha,” she writes.
Wow, I can’t believe she hates Chapman, the Yale of Connecticut high schools, maybe all of New England. I write: “You are so lucky you are almost done with high school!!” And then I add, “I hate it”
“Felt the same way too. Don’t worry. It goes by even when it doesn’t feel like it.”
Then she texts this: “Have to go to DC next weekend to look at schools. Waste of time. Want UConn. Are you around this weekend?”
My heart speeds up. What? What did she just ask? Am I around this weekend? Should I tell her I’ve been around for the last one hundred and sixteen weekends without one pathetic invite? We bipolarites generally have light social calendars. I’ll keep it short and simple. “Yes”
“Have museum thing for my mother’s work on Sunday. In new haven. Do you want to come with me? New exhibit opening. We can get froyo next to museum.”
Jesus! A positive rush roars through me. Kristal wants to hang out with me. Outside of St. Anne’s.
I text back: “Sounds like fun”
My phone choos right away with her response: “Awesome Cat! Will give you details tomorrow at St. A. ”
The Weight of Zero Page 8